Andrea Rodriguez (BFA '25) | Photo by Cathryn Farnsworth

The USC Kaufman Fourth-Year BFA student recounts a journey of returning to her heritage through music, movement, and memory.

By Andrea Rodriguez (BFA ’26)

It’s 10 a.m. on a Sunday. I hear the kitchen sink running, plates clinking, the vacuum whirring and Héctor Acosta “El Torito” blasting on the other side of my wall.

This collection of sounds that exists between music and memory plays from my childhood soundtrack. Whether it was salsa, merengue, bachata or reggaeton, my mother constantly lived in music. There was always something cooking on the stove — sofrito sizzling, garlic and onions announcing the start of a new week. What might have felt like a chore to someone else was, for us, an act of fulfillment. It was a celebration of love and culture wrapped in melody and aroma.

To this day, rhythms and scents that remind me of my mother’s Sunday ritual echo in me. As I got older, I began to understand that those Sundays weren’t just about tidying up the house but about unintentional lessons in identity.

There is no doubt she lives her life proud to be Latina, and even less doubt that she built her home so I could do the same. It’s in the way we season our food, the way we dance through the mundane, the way we carry our culture like rhythm — constant, grounding and unshakable. Through everyday rituals, my mother was teaching me how to find joy in work and how to honor my roots. She instilled in me how to carry our culture forward in spaces that didn’t always make room for it. Through her, I learned that pride is something to unapologetically live in, day by day.

When I first left New York City and arrived at USC, those lessons took on a new meaning. The transition to a new city that felt wide and endless was harder than I expected. The pace was unfamiliar, the distances stretched and isolation quickly became the norm. Even those who spoke the same languages as I did didn’t quite understand me. Beyond misunderstanding my vernacular or not listening to the same music, there was an energetic disconnect. Not to mention that every corner was missing a bodega and there weren’t chucheros blasting dembow down the block.

In trying to acclimate, I felt pieces of myself slipping away, becoming ashamed of who I was. I grew quiet and cautious, as if hiding the most vibrant parts of myself would make me belong. Soon, I was no longer speaking Spanish, playing familiar rhythms or moving naturally. I started mistaking humility for silence and confidence for arrogance, trying to conceal who I was to not fit a stereotype in social spaces, at school and in the studio.

Eventually, I realized that hiding wasn’t protecting me; it was erasing me. Constantly feeling out of body I was never living in the present. I decided to turn back to what always kept me grounded: ritual.

In time, the traditions I grew up with began to reemerge. I started cleaning with joy again, lighting candles and letting the smell of garlic and onions fill my tiny kitchen. I’d put on Héctor Acosta, Antony Santos or Celia Cruz — the same voices that once vibrated through my NYC apartment. I even made a playlist called Limpia la Casa that I play on Sunday mornings. It became my way of reconnecting, building a bridge between where I come from and where I am now. Movement felt holistic again. Bringing fundamentals and ideas of the Caribbean dances I grew up practicing into the new styles I was exploring grounded my artistic voice.

In moments when I lose my footing, these rituals return me to myself. The music, the movement, the scent of home cooking — they remind me that culture is not confined by geography and can ground us anywhere. It travels with us, reshaping itself in new spaces, adapting but never fading. Those Sunday mornings taught me that identity is something you tend to and something you keep alive. I’m forever grateful for those valuable lessons my mother passed down to me that I relearn every day: movement as resilience and identity as something sacred.